When I first woke after the helicopter crash in Peru, I'd no idea how long I'd been out. Minutes, hours, maybe even days. My head had hurt, and unable to make any sense of my surroundings, I'd closed my eyes again. I don't know how long I'd been unconscious or conscious, only that I had spent far too long swimming in and out of awareness. Not all of them were dead then, and I supposed the groans and half-conscious movements of these strange creatures had kept scavengers from the bodies so far.

But flies, no respecters of either the living or the dead, had already visited those with open wounds, and when I could finally sit up and see clearly, their ghoulish legacy was all I saw at first. All around me, white maggots writhed busily, crawling on the bodies of my men, the tiny movements giving them the illusion of life, until I saw that some of them (two? three?) were alive still.

They were alive, and I couldn't stand it, that these worms should be feeding on them, who were fathers, brothers, husbands and friends, too impatient to wait for the grave, and I began pulling frantically at these creeping things, ripping them out of my men, living or dead, by the handfuls, plucking them out from crevices in the torn flesh and throwing them away. I didn't crush them; somehow I had the strange idea that they were part of my men, and to crush them would be doing the same to my men, or perhaps it was some odd notion of hygiene, as if they were not already in those gaping wounds I can still see.

And they died, all of them, the worms and my men. Later, Incacha would tell me that if I'd left at least a few of the worms, they might have prevented the infection that had killed the survivors. So it was my fault that the entire team was lost. I might have died there too, with them...I will not remember this when I wake, the way dreams and nightmares evaporate with returning consciousness like mist in the sun.

Sometimes, I seem to see movement, pale flickers, when you are still, as if something small and white crawled on you. Because I am awake then, I do not remember why the idea is so horrifying, and I do not try to tear them off you. Instead, I brush them off lightly, flicking them one by one off your hair and skin, disguised in friendly touches and smiles. I remember that you were dead, and if these worms can keep your body from decomposing altogether, I can live with them.

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